The Gravity of the Thing is an independent literary magazine dedicated to the publication of innovative and defamiliarized writing. Since the journal’s inception in 2013, The Gravity of the Thing has been named one of thirty best online magazines (Bookfox) and one of fifteen best literary journals of 2015 (Authors Publish Magazine). We publish work that is aware of its literary form, writing that defamiliarizes in craft or content for an enhanced rendering of reality.

Defamiliarization: an artistic or literary technique that presents the common in unfamiliar ways; that which has been taken for granted reenvisioned, made strange, to heighten a reader’s perception of the familiar.

“The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known.” —Viktor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique”

The Gravity of the Thing publishes writers of varying experience. We encourage previously unpublished writers to submit, and we aim to support writing by those often marginalized in the literary conversation, including (though certainly not limited to) people of color, women, differently-abled people, LGBTQIA people, veterans, and people with intersectional identities.